Why 'Les Misérables' resonates with Filipinos, according to Lea Salonga

For many Filipino audiences, "Les Miserables" is not something you simply watch. It is something you grow up with, return to, and carry with you through different seasons of life. 

That familiarity is immediately visible in Manila theaters, where audiences know the score by heart and react not just as spectators, but as people who feel personally invested in the story unfolding onstage.

For Lea Salonga, that connection is neither accidental nor sentimental. She believes the musical’s lasting hold on Filipino audiences comes from something deeper than iconic songs or grand staging. It comes from recognition.

“As a younger person, you tend to see yourself in the younger characters,” Salonga said. “You have these young idealists, these academics who want to see a better, brighter world for everyone.”

Those idealists, embodied by the students on the barricades, speak to a stage of life marked by urgency and belief.

But Salonga points out that "Les Misérables" does not stop there. As audiences age, their point of entry into the story shifts.

“And then as you get older, you see this woman who will do anything for her child,” she said. 

That ability to meet audiences where they are, regardless of age, is part of what allows the musical to remain relevant across generations. Filipinos, Salonga noted, do not outgrow "Les Misérables." They simply return to it differently.

“No matter what season we are in our lives, what age we are in our lives, we come back again and again and again,” she said.

Beyond idealism and sacrifice, Salonga believes Filipino audiences also connect strongly to the musical’s portrayal of survival. The story does not shy away from moral compromise, desperation, or inequality. Instead, it places those realities at its center.

“There are people who will do literally some of the most… they will debase themselves to make a buck,” she said. “And we understand that in a country like this.”

She points to characters whose actions are shaped by necessity rather than virtue: a man who scavenges the bodies of the dead in the sewers of Paris, another who steals a loaf of bread and is sentenced to 19 years on a chain gang.

“This isn’t exactly commensurate punishment for that,” Salonga said. 

"But you root for the guy who stole the loaf of bread.”

Even the show’s moral divisions are complicated. The policeman, often viewed as the villain, is not purely evil, she noted. 

The story resists simple judgments, reflecting a world where justice is uneven and consequences are rarely fair.

“It’s a little complicated,” she said. “But I think it lasted this long because there is someone and there is something about a character that you just latch onto and hang onto and relate to.”

Salonga also frames "Les Misérables" as a story of what she calls “righteous revolution,” a theme she believes is deeply ingrained in the Filipino psyche.

“People standing up for what is right against oppression or against injustice,” she said. “I think that is just engraved in us Filipinos.”

That sense of collective struggle, she added, is why many Filipinos see themselves in the students on the barricades, even if the story is set in 19th-century France. The historical distance does not dilute the emotion. If anything, it sharpens it.

The endurance of "Les Misérables" is reinforced by its music, which Salonga describes as inseparable from the audience’s memory. The score, she said, has become instinctive for many Filipinos.

“These songs are in the bones of so many people,” she said. “It’s been in my bones for 33 years.”

That ingrained familiarity is also why the musical works powerfully in concert form. Without elaborate sets or staging, the story still lands, carried by music that audiences already know where it is going, emotionally and narratively.

For the world-class Filipino theater icon, "Les Misérables" continues to resonate not because it offers escape, but because it reflects realities audiences recognize: struggle, sacrifice, injustice, hope, and the belief that standing up still matters.

The "Les Misérables: The World Tour Spectacular" started its run on January 20 and will last until March 1, 2026 at the Theater at Solaire.

Salonga will be part of the cast, taking on the role of Madame Thénardier. Fellow Filipino artists Rachelle Anne Go, Emily Bautista, and Red Concepcion also join the cast of the "Les Misérables" world tour as Fantine, Eponine, and Thénardier, respectively.